Jules Cobb and her hilarious circle of friends are back for more laughs on DVD in the fabulous third season of television's hit comedy, Cougar Town, this time from Lionsgate Entertainment. Courteney Cox stars in this brilliant series about a divorced mom facing the hysterical challenges and rewards of life's next chapter. Wedding bells are ringing! Jules and Grayson are excited to tie the knot, but friends, finances and past relationships threaten to derail their big day. Emotions get even hotter when Travis sets his sights on Laurie, and Bobby tries to take his relationship with Angie to the next level. Plus, Jules throws a memorial service for her beloved Big Carl. The series is one of the best comedies on TV and we get season three on a nice two-disc set! All 15 laugh-out-loud episodes are featured.
Cougar Town stars Courteney Cox as Jules Cobb, Christa Miller as Ellie Torres, Busy Phillips as Laurie Keller, Brian Van Holt as Bobby Cobb, Dan Byrd as Travis Cobb, Ian Gomez as Andy Torres, and Josh Hopkins as Grayson Ellis. Recurring is Bob Clendenin as Tom Gazelian.

Episodes:

(Badly Titled) Cougar Town is pure fun and we are now getting the DVDs from Lionsgate, rather than ABC Studios. This third season is the last season on ABC as the series now airs on TBS for seasons 4 and beyond. The series has the zany humor of Bill Lawrence’s other series Scrubs. If you like that show, then you’ll certainly be hooked on this show. I think this show is even better with sharper writing and more crazy plotlines in season three, and even has nice touching moments. All 15 episodes this season were amazing, but we’ll try to pick some memorable episodes. In the season premiere “Ain’t Love Strange,” Jules gets mad when Grayson says she is predictable, and when her car is covered with toilet paper and made to look like a shark by a group of teenagers, she decides to prove him wrong by toilet papering their home, while Ellie worries about Stan's behavior after a series of destructive streaks. In “Full Moon Fever,” Bobby falls for Travis' photography teacher, Angie (guest star Sarah Chalke), while Laurie begins a new relationship with a soldier through Twitter and a gang of kids is terrorizing the cul-de-sac. In probably the best episode of the season, “A One Story Town,” the gang sets up the perfect date to help Bobby in romancing Angie, while it's the annual Crab festival in Gulfhaven, filling the town to the brim with Quebecers. In “Down South,” when a hurricane strikes in town, Jules throws a "hurricane party," while Travis wants to make a play for Laurie after learning that she recently broke-up with her soldier boyfriend. On the first part of the season finale, “My Life,” anger over losing his privacy causes Grayson to tell Laurie that Jules only invited her to be her co-bridesmaid out of pity and as a punishment for Jules, the gang begins to repeat the same day over and over again until Jules apologizes. And on the second part, “Your World,” Ellie finds herself attracted to a helpful Napa hotel concierge named Daniel (David Arquette), which makes Andy jealous, while Jules and Grayson have a quick wedding on the beach with her father, Chick, serving as the minister.

Recurring guests this season are Ken Jenkins as Chick, Sarah Chalke as Angie, Nicole Sullivan as Lynne, Sawyer Ever as Stan, Shawn Parikh as Sig, and LaMarcus Tinker as Kevin. Then Guest starring this season is Barry Bostwick, Sam Lloyd, Zach Braff, Robert Maschio, Michael Ausiello, and David Arquette.

Moreover, the episodes are unedited at just about 21:30 or so. Runtimes are really consistent. Episode runtimes are as follows:

Penny can! I wish the set was designed as a penny can, but that is unlikely. Anyway, the packaging doesn’t have an outer box this time, as we just have a keep case. The cover art has a nice cast photo under a nice blue sky. The color scheme is sky blue and yellow. Above the cast photo it says Courtney Cox Cougar Town and above that it says The Complete Third Season. The back of the case has a nice synopsis of the show and set with nice promotional photos of each character (these looks like season 2 photos, though!). In addition, there is a blue box listing all the bonus features for this set.

When we open the case, we don’t get an artwork on the panels this time, as probably expected since this is a Lionsgate set now. We get an episode insert, listing each episode title, writer, director and synopsis of the episode. It has a yellow background with promotional photos. It’s a one page insert, front and back. The first disc is in a little plastic holder that we can flip back and forth like a page in a book. And disc two is on the right panel. Disc one has artwork of the entire cast with a yellow background and holds episodes 1-8. Disc two has artwork of the cast again (this time the same from the cover art) and has a yellow background and holds episodes 9-15 and the bonus features.

Menu Design and Navigation:

Since we move from ABC Studios to Lionsgate, the menu design has changed. We don’t have the map of Florida but we start with the show logo then go to a blue sky background with grass, with different characters popping up one by one. There are also video clips playing on a screen behind them, with background music playing in the background (not the opening theme). The options for the main menu are: Play All, Episode Selection, and Extras. Episode Selection menu has the number and title of the episode, along with a screenshot from the episode. Details on the Bonus Features will be in the extras section, as they are just listed in text in the Extras menu on disc two. About 5 chapter stops are available for each episode and the show is in widescreen, of course.

Video and Audio Quality:

The video and audio are both excellent, as it should be since this is a new season and the season just finished last May. The video is in widescreen as I mentioned earlier, while the audio is perfect in Dolby Digital Surround Sound. I have no complaints whatsoever...as I keep saying, new series from 2000 and on should have no video/audio defects at all, or it is a total failure by the company. It is perfect on here however, as it should be. There are 5 chapter stops, which I again mentioned in the last section and that is more than the 4 we had last season. So we have nothing to be worried about here, because it is near perfection. Good job by Lionsgate, in continuing to deliver great audio and video like ABC Studios did, but this is how it is expected to be for newer series. The one-hour season finale is broken into two-parts, like how originally intended since they are two episodes.

Special Features:

We don’t have a lot of special features this time. It’s by far the lowest amount of special features for this series, but that is expected since the DVDs are now produced by Lionsgate rather than ABC Studios. First up, we have 7 deleted scenes; up from the 6 the previous season, I wish we had more though and as Andy would say, “Come on!” Each deleted scene is listed with a scene title. I wish there was a listing of what episode the deleted scene was from, like they did last season. The deleted scenes run 5:20.

Finally, we have some “Bloopers” that run only 2:52. That is way too short, but it is longer than last season’s reel, though still it is a joy to watch. I wish we had more extras, as that is my only complaint.

Final Comments:

This is a great show as the episodes just get better and better. It really found its groove in season three and had a nice mix of comedy and heart. This is a great set, too despite the quantity of the special features being tremendously down from the previous set. I wish we had some audio commentaries, featurettes and maybe some longer bloopers, but that is minor. The packaging is good, the menus are good (though heavily downgraded from the ABC Studios sets), and the audio & video are still excellent. This is a great set produced by Lionsgate for the very first time, and if you have only watched a few episodes, I suggest you give it a look and watch them because the show is unbelievable funny and silly. Classic episodes air right now on TBS, weekdays at 5pm. The series is in its fourth season right now and now airs on TBS, Tuesdays at 10pm. Catch-up while sipping wine on your Big Carl (oh wait, he died this year, so bring in Big Kimo now). Don’t use Little Richard though, woo!